climate-struck, it had braved the equator and the pole, the battle
and the breeze, the scorching heat and the petrifying cold,--it was,
as might be expected, thin, and moreover almost lost in a profusion
of hair on each cheek, so that it would be difficult for the oldest
acquaintance to recognise the features after long absence; nature had
made the lips to smile, the eyes to beam in kindness, the fine high
forehead to command respect; but time and hardships, disease and
disappointment, had quenched the fire of the organ of sight and
intelligence, the mirror of the soul,--had prematurely furrowed that
front of honest English high spirit and candour, and had taught the
lips to fall in dejection and the treasured silence of woe: upon the
whole, the figure had something fierce in it, but it was truly manly;
the warrior's arms were folded together, and his face, bent towards
the ground, was still half up-turned, and seemed to say to rich
merchants and venders passing by on foot and in carriages, "There ye
are, ye liers upon beds of down, ye feeders upon the poor man's toil;
often have you slept secure, and safely enjoyed your wealth, whilst
poor Jack rode out the gale, hung on the rigging betwixt life and
death, and endured the storm which held him every moment betwixt
the chance of clinging to a fragment of the wreck and sinking into
eternity: but, now the war is over, smart-money paid for a sharp
wound, and neglect and oblivion, are the seaman's portion." The
expression of his face and eyes seemed to speak thus; indeed, it spoke
volumes; but its mute appeal was lost on the worldlings, who brushed
by him, and who, bent on love of gain, scarcely were aware that their
fellow-man was starving by their side, too feeble and too much an
outcast to work, yet too proud to beg; the middy's heart, however, was
of that texture that it leant towards a brother-sailor, meet him where
it might, and he naturally looked round at poor Jack on his beam-ends:
he had but one penny in his pocket, and that the plaintive voice of